-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Are technology companies ailing ?

Hewlett-Packard certainly is . The venerable behemoth announced it will implement a restructuring that includes eliminating 27,000 jobs . HP tried to bring itself around by replacing its CEO last year . That did n't quite do the trick , so now it 's resorting to the good old-fashioned mass layoff .

One suspects that HP is a little too venerable . It was the first `` Stanford spinoff , '' fittingly reflected in the presence of Hewlett Hall and Packard Hall in the engineering corner of the Stanford campus . Yet HP has n't stayed ahead of the innovation curve , failing for instance to adapt well to the tablet craze .

This could be the end of an era .

Consider two Stanford neighbors of Hewlett and Packard Halls -- Gates Hall and the Huang Center . Bill Gates ' company may be losing the innovation war , too . It 's getting pummeled by the tablets as well , and just this week Google 's Chrome Web browser overtook Microsoft 's Internet Explorer in popularity . By contrast , the Huang Center was funded by Jen-Hsun Huang , whose firm NVIDIA has been revolutionizing the supercomputer field .

But wo n't those laid-off HP engineers be snapped up by the booming tech sector ? Many will not .

The tech job market is excellent for younger workers , but many of those who are laid off and over 35 will find the market less welcoming . They 're perceived as too expensive . The HP layoff will consist disproportionately of older workers . Indeed , jettisoning the veterans is often the hidden agenda in mass layoffs . It 's no coincidence that many of the U.S. core engineering openings at HP have titles like Recent Graduate , Intern and Post Doc , all aimed at the younger crowd .

The difficulties of older techies have been investigated statistically in studies at American University and the National Research Council , but a very public human face was placed on this recently in an online town hall meeting with President Obama .

The wife of electrical engineer Darin Wedel explained to the president that her husband has never found a permanent job after being laid off by the electronics giant Texas Instruments . Granted , family issues restricted him to the Dallas area , but if the hype regarding a seller 's market for engineers were true , Wedel should have been able to find something in that region , which sadly has not been the case .

A former student of mine was a star at HP for 10 years or so , acquiring patents and promotions . Yet he , too , got caught up in a huge layoff , and could find engineering work only sporadically afterward . Ultimately he left the field .

Those who survive this round of HP layoffs will likely find themselves being asked to not only do their own jobs , but also those of the departed . Engineers are exempt employees , hence no overtime pay , and HP will accrue a net reduction in labor costs .

Another tried and true fix for a sick firm -LRB- and for the well ones -RRB- is to ship work abroad . A few years ago , HP executive Ann Livermore made it plain : `` A basic business tenet is that things go to the areas where there is the best cost of production . '' HP 's jobs Web page shows that 48 of the 113 open core engineering positions are outside the United States .

Unlike Livermore 's explicit position on cheap labor , former HP CEO Carly Fiorina said that HP offshores work because the American educational system does n't develop good math skills in its students . That claim is a red herring . HP workers , including those being discarded , are among the best in the business , and were whizzes in math when they were in school . Many of our technology leaders , from Hewlett to Huang , are products of the American school system .

The offshored operations often require U.S.-based workers to make periodic site visits . Survivors of the HP layoffs who always wanted to visit Singapore may now get their chance -- monthly .

To her credit , HP 's current CEO , Meg Whitman , conceded that layoffs `` adversely impact people 's lives . '' But she insisted that the action is necessary . Probably so , but the message here is that engineers , like many others , will have to get used to a life of layoffs in a globalized economy .

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Norman Matloff .

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Hewlett-Packard announced it will eliminate 27,000 jobs

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Norman Matloff : Many laid-off HP employees will not have an easy time finding jobs

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He says tech job market is great for young workers , but not for older , experienced workers

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Matloff : Engineers , like everyone else , need to adjust to the realities of a global economy